Regions
Friday, August 13th, 2021: 2021 Trips, Baldy, Hikes, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips, Southeast Arizona, Whites.
Day of the Fungids
The next day was Friday, and I was hoping to hit my favorite nearby trail before the weekend rush. In fact, I realized I should now be able to do the full loop for the first time, hiking up one route to the top and returning down the other. It totalled 17 miles, but involved less than 3,000′ of accumulated elevation gain.
I drove the shortcut, the rough backcountry road through alternating mixed-conifer forest and vast grassy meadows across the rolling, 9,000′ plateau to the trailhead, where I parked next to a new, lifted Toyota pickup where two college-age guys were preparing to start a backpack. They were both at least six inches taller than me. All I had to do was shoulder my pack and lock the vehicle, so I took off while they were still getting ready.
I crossed the big meadows around the mouth of the East Fork of the Little Colorado, and stopped after about a half mile, as usual, to stretch, and to tighten and secure my bootlaces. The young guys caught up and passed me there.
But, also as usual, I was full of energy at the start of this hike, and soon caught up with them again as the three of us climbed through the fantastic sandstone boulders that are the highlight of this trail.
Halfway up this first slope, we passed a party of two young couples who were camping in the forest below the trail – only two miles from the trailhead. Like on my last trip to these mountains, I was surprised to find so many young people “slackpacking” – hiking only a short distance to camp near a trailhead, something my generation would consider pointless.
I was on the young guys’ tail all the way to the big rock exposure at the top of the ridge, and passed them where they had stopped there to take in the view. I knew there was a second rock exposure farther on, also with a good view, and I never saw them again.
I remembered seeing a lot of mushrooms on my last visit here during monsoon season, but nothing like this time. Mushrooms were so plentiful they became the theme of the hike – especially the flamboyant Amanita muscaria. But the wildflowers came a close second.
From the big rock exposures at the top of the first ridge, the trail continues climbing the ridgeline through dense spruce forest with no views, so I kept racing upward. Near the point were I’d stopped and turned back on my first and longest previous hike here, I caught up with and passed a solo backpacker, another really tall guy, probably in his 40s. It made me wonder. I was doing this entire trail system as a day hike. There were no connecting trails, so why were so many people doing it as a backpack? It seemed at best only a one-night trip, which didn’t seem worth all the effort of backpacking. Sure, you could camp out at the crest, but there wasn’t any place to go from there except back down.
Shortly after passing the backpacker, I reached the burn scar near the top, where the east route becomes the west route.
This burn scar in spruce forest, at over 11,000′ elevation, is an eerie place, but during this abundant monsoon it was teeming with verdant shrubs and annual wildflowers, and water trickled down across the trail at many points.
Storms had been forecast for the whole weekend, but so far, although cloud cover came and went, I could see nothing menacing overhead. The temperature was perfect, which was probably lucky for me, as I was testing out a new pair of pants.
My regular pants were heavy cotton, and had been selected for thorn-resistance. But during this monsoon I’d suffered so much from waterlogged pants wicking moisture into my boots, so I’d spent some time researching both waterproof and thornproof pants.
REI and the other “hiker” brands don’t address this need at all – they assume their yuppie customers will stick to well-maintained trails or climb snowy peaks devoid of thorns. REI staff in Tucson actually admitted to me, to their chagrin, that despite being in the arid southwest, they get the same inventory as their counterparts in Seattle. My only recourse, as with my boots, was to research the hunting suppliers. That’s where I learned that thornproof and waterproof pants constitute part of the “upland” hunting wardrobe – applying to hunters of non-aquatic game birds like pheasant and grouse, because they have to bushwhack through thorny thickets, often during storms or in heavy morning dew.
I’d ordered an affordable but highly-rated pair of U.S.-made upland hunting pants, and so far my only problem with them was the lining. It hadn’t been clear from the product info that they were lined, and although the pants had zippable side vents from knee to hip, the lining would probably make them really hot on most summer days in our climate. So I was doubly glad it was cool today.
After a half mile or so, the trail left the burn scar and re-entered intact spruce forest. And suddenly I was facing a blue grouse, pacing back and forth on a fallen tree trunk only ten feet in front of me. I stopped and was able to get my camera out – another recent challenge in itself.
I’d broken the lens assembly on my previous camera, and had spent over a month trying to find a replacement, and a way to protect the new camera from similar accidents. Whereas in the past I’d carried the camera alternately on a wrist strap and in a pocket, I was now wearing it in a holster-type case on my belt, where I tried to remember to slip on the wrist strap before pulling out the camera.
The big bird – they’re the same size as the average chicken – cooperated by remaining on the log as I took a few pictures. Then it made a noise and another grouse exploded out of the bush at my feet, and they both took off. It was the animal highlight of my trip.
This segment of trail left the mature forest and climbed gently through tiny meadows and dense groves of spruce seedlings, until it reached its high point in a saddle below the actual peak, which is sacred to the Apaches and off-limits to Anglos. At this saddle, I’d been hoping for a view over the vast country to the west, which descends for hundreds of miles to the low desert around Phoenix. But it was densely forested, and in rare peeks between the surrounding tree trunks, all I could see was more high, densely forested mountains in the near distance. So I continued down onto the outlying ridge above the canyon of the West Fork.
That outlying ridge finally brought me to a narrow saddle with an open view to the southeast – so I at least had a new perspective on the ridge I’d climbed in the morning. I’d climbed so fast that it was still early in the day, and I realized that if I didn’t slow down, I’d be done with the hike by midafternoon. I didn’t want that – I wanted to spend more time up here in this special alpine forest that is so rare in our Southwest.
Past the narrow, semi-open saddle, the trail began switchbacking down the very steep side of the West Fork canyon. Eventually it reached the head of the drainage in a burn scar where spruce seedlings were returning and wild raspberries were abundant.
Past the burn scar at the head of the West Fork, the trail curved leftwards through intact spruce forest into a big side canyon, where it finally crossed a robust creek. This trail may lack the spectacular rock outcrops of the East Fork – although there are plenty of boulders in the West Fork forest – but it actually has more varied habitat.
As part of my “slowing down” plan, I was paying even more attention now to my surroundings – primarily plants, fungi, and butterflies. In the stretch of trail past the side creek I saw my first coral fungus.
I was surprised to be feeling pretty sore and weary. To get back to the vehicle, I had to continue on this trail to its junction with the “crossover” trail, a 3-1/2 mile link between the trailheads. So no matter how much farther it was to the junction, I would still have those 3-1/2 miles to cross over.
But before starting the hike, I’d glanced at the elevation profile for the crossover trail, and had concluded it would be all downhill from this side. So at least I had that in my favor.
Eventually I started encountering meadows, which encouraged me to believe the junction was near. Each one ended up giving false hope, but at least I could see the West Fork meandering scenically below.
Finally, crossing a grassy slope high above the little river, I spotted a person far ahead. Then suddenly a bird flushed out of the meadow ahead of the distant person and shot overhead and past me. It appeared to be a falcon, which would explain why it was on the ground. When I reached the people who had flushed the bird – a couple a little older than me – I was so excited about the bird that I forgot to ask them how much farther it was to the trail junction.
After the falcon incident, I couldn’t ignore the pain in my left foot and right ankle. The right ankle pain was exactly like what I’d had in my left ankle a couple of years earlier. I was limping on both feet again, just like last weekend, and not looking forward at all to the crossover hike. I was transitioning from excitement about my beautiful surroundings into a “got to just survive this” frame of mind.
Fortunately it was only about a half mile beyond the bird incident that I met a college-age couple who pointed to the crossover junction, only a hundred yards farther. There, I crossed the rushing West Fork on a crude log bridge, and to my surprise, faced a steep climb on the other side.
In fact, I’d completely misinterpreted the crossover elevation profile. This trail was like a rollercoaster, climbing and descending hundreds of rocky feet at a time, sometimes at up to a 40% grade, through deep forest and across vast rolling meadows, over and over again, for the entire 3-1/2 miles between trailheads. In my condition, it was like some sort of legendary trial.
One of the few benefits of the crossover was the abundance of coral fungi.
The anticipated storm didn’t hit until I arrived back in the village, and even then it was only scattered showers. I changed out of my heavy gear and limped over to the restaurant, where I’d made a reservation the previous evening. This time I had a steak and a glass of pinot noir.
Saturday, August 14th, 2021: 2021 Trips, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips.
Couch Potato
Saturday was about resting and recovering and relishing my time away from the terrible pressure of home. I had plenty to read on my iPad, and throughout the day, I did some long slow stretching and iced my foot and ankle at intervals. I knew how to treat my foot, but the ankle really worried me. It was swollen and my boots tightened right on the pressure point, so no more hiking until it healed.
There was one seemingly identical cabin next to me, but the folks staying there were having a near-continual party in their tiny back yard with a large group of companions from elsewhere in the village. And of course, the larger cabin across the road had a barking dog – it’s impossible to get away from barking dogs in this era cursed with social media.
I found that the futon couch was actually more comfortable than the bed – but to use it as a bed would require opening it flat, which would call for some brute force that would risk triggering my back pain. So I was stuck with things as they were. I’d brought fixings for a simple dinner at home that night, and went to bed early.
Sunday, August 15th, 2021: 2021 Trips, Gila, Hikes, Regions, Road Trips, San Francisco Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
Short Hike on a Poor Trail
Sunday was departure day, but I didn’t want to just race back home. I didn’t want to leave at all, and I’d considered staying an extra night, but back home, the city was resurfacing the street where my house is located during the coming week, and on Monday morning I had to move my truck off the street into the driveway all the contractors were using, arranging to switch with them. To avoid getting the truck towed, if I stayed here another night, I’d have to leave really early in the morning.
I had a few hours before checking out to study the maps, and I figured if I could attach some padding over the swollen ankle, maybe I could stop along the way for a shorter hike. I identified a few possibilities along the Arizona-New Mexico border.
While packing, I put on all my hiking clothes, applied biomechanical taping to my foot and a felt pad over the swollen ankle, and finally slipped into my boots. I tried to walk across the floor, but there was no way I could walk in those boots with that ankle. Damn!
I took off all the hiking gear, and changed back into my driving shorts and t-shirt. My sneakers were so low cut that they didn’t bother the ankle – I finally realized it wasn’t any kind of a strain or sprain, it was just some kind of pressure- or friction-caused inflammation. And then it occurred to me to try my other pair of boots, which I’d brought as backup in case the primary pair got wet.
My primary boots are designed for maximum ankle support – the shaft or collar of the boot, around the ankle, is reinforced. This is the part that is apparently irritating my ankles on long hikes. The other pair of boots are cut below the swollen area, so when I tried them on, they didn’t even contact it. I realized I could probably stop for a hike after all, so I set aside all my hiking gear for quick access in the vehicle.
As usual, I took the scenic route through the mountains before connecting with the highway home. It seems shorter every time – it’s so beautiful you don’t want it to end.
Back on the highway, the first turnoff I tried was at a pass between Alpine and Luna. It was a forest road I’d always wondered about, that claimed to lead to a fire lookout. It turned out to be one of those actually scary mountain roads – steep, twisty, rocky and deeply eroded, and strictly one-lane, with a deadly dropoff at the edge. The trail I was optimistically looking for was probably impassable – maps showed it crossed a large burn scar, and it hadn’t been maintained since the big wildfire – and the trailhead was almost 6 miles back on this road. The road went up, and down, and around, very slowly, and the first couple of miles took me 10 minutes, so I found a wide spot in a bend and turned around. Then I encountered a big truck coming up, and had to back uphill to the turnaround place to let them pass.
The next possible hikes were off a prominent backcountry road between Reserve and Glenwood, and would be my first exploration of the legendary Blue Range Primitive Area and Wilderness. I’d always wanted to explore this area, but it was simultaneously too close to and too far from home to be convenient.
It was a glorious day, like my first day of hiking. This area was a couple thousand feet lower than the alpine region I’d just left, with parklike pinyon, juniper, and occasional ponderosa over rolling hills at the foot of higher ridges and mountains in the near distance. I had two trails to choose from. The first was represented by an unnamed kiosk and had clear tread that beckoned up a shallow canyon. But from the map it looked too easy and didn’t seem to offer views.
The next trail was listed as “cleared” by a trail crew two years earlier, and appeared to climb a low ridge for a mile or two. There was no real trailhead – I was looking carefully at the roadside as I drove slowly along, and just happened to notice one of those little “hiker” icons on a post at an overgrown turnout. There was no tread leading inward, only the vague, overgrown suggestion of an opening through the parklike forest. But when I took a few steps past the signpost, I glimpsed a faded wilderness sign on a pinyon pine far ahead. So I figured I would gear up and check it out.
It was well past lunchtime, and I decided to not only make a sandwich – utilizing my new cooler as a table – but to drink a beer as well, breaking my usual habit of not drinking until the evening. Nothing says vacation like drinking in midday, and especially before a hike!
This trail turned out to be mostly forgettable. No one besides trespass cattle had used it in ages, and the surface was my most hated local footing – a mix of embedded and loose volcanic cobbles that is maddening and dangerous to walk on. Marked frequently by cairns, the route climbed the ridge at a generally shallow grade, mostly exposed so despite the mild temperature I was sweating pretty bad. But I was determined to get as high as I could, in hope of some kind of view.
The main attraction of that view turned out to be behind me – the peak with the fire lookout at the end of that scary road I’d given up on the way here. It was about 5 miles away to the northwest, and was a pretty mountain with a complex mosaic of rocky slopes, forest, and meadows.
Marked only by its cairns, my route drifted in and out of a cleared corridor through the open scrub forest, suggesting that in some distant past there might’ve been a wagon trail. The path completely ended in dense chaparral at the top of the ridge, after only a couple of miles of hiking.
When trail workers reported this trail “cleared” two years ago, it was obvious that all they meant was that they’d checked it to the chaparral on top – there’d been no clearing required. And it seemed that nobody but me even cared.
On the way down I lost the trail at one point, where a false cairn beckoned me onto a game trail down a side drainage. After wasting 5 minutes on that sidetrack, I dismantled the fraudulent cairn and found the right track to continue back to my vehicle. By my standards it hadn’t been much of a hike, but at least I’d set foot in a new wilderness area and seen some new mountains.
I had a pleasant drive home as usual – apart from the minivan driver who wanted to race down the twistiest part of the highway, tailgating me dangerously, finally passing only to slow down in front of me on the straight part of the road as he drifted back and forth across the center line, probably texting on his smart phone. By that point I was relaxed enough not to care.
My home is always first and foremost a studio, an office, a workspace, so the only way I can take a break from work is to get away from home. This trip had been my first getaway – my first vacation – in almost two years. And it had been over two years since I’d visited those mountains. So on the drive home I was re-evaluating my relationship with that place, and my attitude toward it.
One problem I can see is that it has kind of an awkward combination of extreme beauty and overwhelming recreational culture. It’s kind of like a huge national park in which the visitors are widely dispersed instead of concentrated like they are in, for example, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.
Despite its huge size, the area has historically far fewer hiking trails than the national forest in my backyard, and after the 2011 wildfire, only the half dozen most popular and easily accessed of those trails have been maintained. So all the hikers are concentrated on those few trails, none of which is particularly challenging. The trails in the large, rugged wilderness area at the south of the range have been abandoned and are essentially impassable, because that was the origin of the wildfire.
So for me, as a hiker looking for challenges and new discoveries, the area actually doesn’t seem to offer much.
But since the northern half of the range consists of those vast grassy meadows divided by hills and ridges with relatively open mixed-conifer forest, it suddenly occurred to me that off-trail hiking might be the solution. Maybe in the future I should just ignore the limited trail network and set off across country. I’m not sure how feasible that would really be, but it’s worth trying…
Friday, November 4th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
Coming Home
Three and a half years had passed since I’d last visited my place in the desert, the place I’ve long called my spiritual home. That’s the longest absence in the 32 years since my Los Angeles friend and I bought the place, but the time span of three and a half years doesn’t begin to convey the changes I, and our society, have gone through.
COVID being the most obvious one, of course, and the reason why I didn’t visit in early 2000. But then my house caught fire, I was only minutes from dying or losing it completely, I had to shuffle between emergency housing for over a year, and repairs still haven’t been completed. Shortly after the fire, I had a near-death experience during a routine dental procedure. And this year, I was hospitalized for three weeks with a mystery illness and again came close to dying.
Since 1989, I had visited our land at least once a year, except for the years 2001 and 2002. That was also one of the hardest times of my life. Traumatized by the end of a relationship, broke and in debt after the collapse of my dotcom business, I’d begun reevaluating my whole existence. What had long felt like a spiritual quest now seemed an idle fantasy, and those remote desert mountains seemed irrelevant to my future.
But in 2007 I renewed my connection with the place by organizing annual campouts with others who love it, including several new friends – a new community brought together by our desert land. These eventually led to a more formal, conservation-oriented meeting in 2019, engaging scientists with Native Americans. I’d almost finished organizing the second meeting when COVID hit in 2020.
Why do I even own this place, and why is it so important to me?
Originally, in the mid-1980s, after falling in love with the desert and learning that people had lived there prehistorically, I gradually found myself wanting to live out there, off the land, like those prehistoric people. My artist friends and I had been camping out there throughout the decade, “domesticating” it for ourselves and generally finding it comfortable and pleasant as well as beautiful and magical. And as I learned more about the natural resources available, it seemed actually doable.
I took a course in aboriginal survival skills, and in spring 2002, after an unusually wet winter, I moved to my land and tried to survive. I relied on local water sources and began harvesting wild foods, but as most would expect, it’s not easy to go straight from civilization to a desert wilderness. And I had a girlfriend back in the city. So the desert would remain a place to visit, not to inhabit.
From the beginning, my co-owner and I had been telling people we wanted to be “stewards” of our land. On sporadic visits, we worked hard cleaning up trash and trying to eradicate invasive plants that conservationists said were destroying native habitat. But we were both struggling with jobs and relationships in the city and never had enough time to be real stewards in the desert.
At that last meeting in 2019, each of us spoke about how we came to love the desert, and what it means to us, and we each had completely different stories. In the end, it’s like asking: Why do people fall in love with each other?
Despite our early impression of comfortable camping, the desert eventually lived up to its reputation as a harsh mistress. Numbing, immobilizing heat in mid-summer. Sudden plagues of unknown insect pests that can drive you out of camp. Days of relentless, scouring gale-force wind that makes even the simplest chore an ordeal. Winter nights that freeze your water jugs solid.
I mentioned the prehistoric denizens, and my own failure to make the desert home. Does anyone actually live out there now? Not in our wild mountains, but a few diehard desert rats remain on or near the highway – like our local rancher, who lives in a house with indoor plumbing and electricity like the rest of us, driving to the nearest town for supplies. And the survivors of the last native inhabitants live similarly modern lives on their reservation, a few hours’ drive away.
Conservationists bemoan the damage caused to natural habitats and populations by industrial society: water sources fouled by domestic livestock like cattle and burros, fatal respiratory diseases spread to native bighorn sheep, riparian habitat degraded by invasive tamarisk, soil crusts trampled by off-road vehicles, underground aquifers threatened by commercial water development. I’ve heard scientists say the desert – or even the entire planet – would be better off if humans were completely eliminated.
A Different Kind of Trip
In recent decades, as my focus broadened to the native tribes and their territory in the Southwest, I spent less and less time on our land and more time exploring other parts of that territory. Even though I allocated up to three weeks for these trips, driving hundreds of miles between states and mountain ranges stressed me out and left me with less time for camping and hiking.
I gave myself ten days for this trip, with no agenda other than simply to reaquaint myself with our land. It had been far too long.
Stuck in Flagstaff
It takes two days to reach the land, and Flagstaff is the midway point, where I typically stop for the night and shop for groceries and other supplies.
I’d spent a few hours on Saturday packing, and being out of practice, I’d forgotten how to protect my lower back when lifting the heavy water jugs, so I triggered my severe back pain and jinxed the trip before it even started. I knew it could only get worse since I would later need to lift the even heavier new ice chest in and out of the vehicle.
All my camping gear, except for sleeping bags, was new and untested, since my old gear had been destroyed in the fire. So another purpose of this trip was to test the new gear. (By the way, gas cans, carried in vehicle when empty, go on the roof when full. I use the small boxy cans because they’re easier on my back to lift and more stable on the roof.)
Late Sunday morning, after loading up, I started the engine, and felt it lurching and stumbling. There’d been no previous warning, so I shut it off and restarted. It seemed to be missing a cylinder, but it was driveable, and there was no way I was going to delay my trip another day to get it checked out locally. Maybe the problem would clear up as the engine warmed up.
Instead, the drive over the mountains to Flagstaff became a seven-hour ordeal. I faced a dramatic loss of power that required downshifting and revving to the redline to get up grades on the highway, and that was especially nerve-wracking on the interstate, under pressure from tractor-trailer rigs on a tight schedule and city drivers enraged to be caught behind me. And I was burning through fuel much faster, with gas prices that were already burdensome.
I made it to Flagstaff, but spent an hour Monday morning driving all over town trying to find a shop that would check my engine. The shop I finally found was downtown, but they couldn’t help me until afternoon.
Flagstaff is one of those Western boom towns that suffers from overdevelopment and hectic traffic. I’ve come to hate it, and strive to limit my time there to the bare minimum. But this time, I was stuck there for two days, most of which I had to spend wandering around town on foot, waiting for the shop to get started. My vehicle needed a tune-up, and parts had to be ordered overnight. And as a traveler from out of state, I was price-gouged by the shop.
I ended up walking loops around downtown, and out to the northwest along the Rio de Flag, a man-made drainage channel that features an artificial pond and riparian corridor. I spent hours one morning in the library reading from a surprisingly limited selection of magazines. None of my experiences made me want to return for more.
Finally, late Tuesday afternoon, I was able to do my shopping and hit the road, with only time enough to reach Kingman, a little over two hours west. By that time I needed to do laundry, in order to have enough clean clothes for a week of camping. So it was a third night in a motel – all in all, car trouble increased the cost of my already expensive trip by about 50%.
The whole time, I was suffering from back pain, wondering if and when it would immobilize me and require emergency treatment. And driving, hammering the accelerator to get up those grades, triggered my chronic hip pain. Was this simply destined to become another poorly-conceived trip from Hell?
My packing is always guided by a Gear List I started decades ago and have continuously updated, but I failed to update it before this trip, so there were some new developments, like a USB C adapter for my camera, that required a last-minute search in Flagstaff, and a few things I disregarded in my rush, like firewood, that turned out to be important once I reached the desert.
On the plus side, the forecast was for mild weather throughout my stay, with mostly clear skies and temperatures ranging from the high 40s to the low 70s. Unfortunately, this was the forecast for the nearest settlement on the highway, more than a thousand feet lower than I’d be camping, and I’d unconsciously stored it in my mind as the weather to prepare for – leading to some issues in the days ahead.
Friday, November 4th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
On Wednesday morning, only needing to buy gas – filling my cans at Arizona prices then topping up at California prices in the desert oasis – I finally headed west across the desert. The highway has been closed to through traffic for most of the past decade, due to bridges washed out in past flash floods, never to be repaired. We can drive around these washouts, but it’s been great to discourage visits from strangers.
The sand-and-gravel road past the ghost town was graded for a gas pipeline test several years ago, and remains fast to the test site, midway up the fan to the pass. But beyond there, a zillion minor ruts forced me below 20 mph average, and past the airstrip, my speed dropped to between 5 and 15 mph as usual.
I was shocked to see how dry everything is – perhaps drier than I’ve ever seen before. The creosote bushes on the alluvial fan have dropped almost all their leaves, with remaining leaves brown and dead, except for a few shallow drainages where highly localized storms caused a little runoff this year. I think we all hoped this year’s wet monsoon would bring rain to these mountains, but that simply didn’t pan out.
Nevertheless, visitation has really dropped off. The rancher has stopped visiting our gulch, and the only recent tracks on our side road were from a single fat tire dirt bike.
Entering the mountains and dropping into the lower gulch, there was little recent erosion, lots of new growth, and no established vehicle tread, so as occasionally in the past, I had to find my way up the big wash as if I’d never been there before. Our improvised gate was still up – the dirt bike had simply gone around where anti-government vandals had cut our fence – and everything else around camp looked as it had three and a half years ago.
It was great to be home, but I was still under a cloud of stress from back pain, feeling like such an idiot for letting it happen. It would hang over me for the next couple of days, always threatening to paralyze me if I made the wrong move in this challenging terrain.
Stopping for lunch in the pass on the way in, I reached camp around 1 pm and immediately prepared for a hike up the gulch. I had no destination in mind and would decide enroute.
My first stop was at the hidden cache of our shade structure, which remained untouched and sheltered. That cheered me up, along with the health of the riparian vegetation.
Invasive tamarisk had regrown significantly in the mid-gulch, but native vegetation still looked good outside the one historical tamarisk patch. New growth and erosion meant that anything but bike travel up the gulch would now be quite destructive, so it was great to see no one had been here to try.
The day was almost perfectly calm in the wash, and when I reached the outlet of the old road up to the mine, which I hadn’t visited in decades, I decided to head up there. The lower part of the road remains in good repair, and as I climbed, I encountered some nice gusts that kept me from overheating. But the road gains 500′ in elevation, becomes quite steep, and crosses a drainage where it’s been eroded beyond driveability, sometime since the early 90s.
Exploring beyond the ledge where the stamp mill was located and the mules corralled, I discovered a well-built mule trail into a side canyon that I couldn’t remember. I followed it a few hundred feet higher in elevation until it was blocked by a giant cholla next to a cliff a dozen feet high. I vowed to return when I had more time, because this trail seemed like a practical route to the crest, not much farther above.
From there, I climbed over a low shoulder and dropped down to the “swimming pool”, a huge concrete water tank I’ve always fantasized about filling with drainage from inside the mine. And at that point, what had so far been an exhilarating hike turned somber.
A mature bighorn ram had fallen in the tank, which is 12-15′ deep, with no way up the nearly sheer walls. This tank is obviously a trap for wildlife, but the only way I could imagine an adult bighorn falling in, is if it was in flight, perhaps from a lion, bounding up the slope from below, and for some reason unfamiliar with this spot and its hazard.
The fall would surely have broken bones, and with luck, caused a concussion that might’ve made the death by dehydration/starvation a little easier.
It was hard to get that tragic image out of my mind on the way back to camp. Despite the breeze up above, the climb had made me sweaty and I was anxious for a shower – I’d filled my new solar shower before leaving camp. But now I remembered that the sun drops below the peak behind camp early, especially this time of year, resulting in an immediate temperature drop. It was getting windier, and I’d be shivering despite the warmth of the water.
Having failed to bring firewood or charcoal, I gathered dead catclaw on my way back to camp, and after arriving, showered quickly, then started preparations for dinner. That’s when I discovered I’d also forgotten newspaper, which I usually carry in my vehicle for tinder. Not a huge problem – this year’s dried-out annual vegetation is always available – but in a pinch I used blank pages from my notebook.
Living and sleeping indoors, it’s sadly easy to forget the night sky even exists. We’ve often complained about the encroachment of skylighting from distant cities, illuminating our horizon out here, but that first night was a revelation to me, after three years of no camping.
The moon was nowhere to be seen, but Jupiter was rising in the east, and without the moon, it easily dominated the sky. My familiar constellations were back, and I took my binoculars to bed, taking care not to trigger more back pain as I wriggled into my warm-weather bag. My new sleeping pad was, frankly, even more comfortable than the old one. I would almost say it’s more comfortable than my mattress at home.
